


fell in love with a war

by uptillthree



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, damen discovers the mortifying ordeal of being known, laurent’s love language is acts of service
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23874436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uptillthree/pseuds/uptillthree
Summary: His chest is still heaving, rising and falling as though he’s finished a footrace. The garden and the pet ring he’d weathered stoically, because both had looked so different in decor and atmosphere compared to the first time he’d been here, a court remade. He’d been given a throne instead of the floor at Laurent’s feet. Laurent had tucked a white flower behind his ear, playful and careless of propriety.The whipping post had been the same.Damen returns to Arles.
Relationships: Damen/Laurent (Captive Prince)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 170





	fell in love with a war

**Author's Note:**

> no one ever talks about damen’s trauma!! 
> 
> trigger warning for laurent talking about his abuse, and damen suffering ptsd.
> 
> title from “a pearl” by mitski... laurent would totally be a mitski fan, is all i’m saying.
> 
> comments and kudos are love <3

When Damen comes back to himself, he is on the northern balcony, overlooking the city of Arles and the forest beyond it. The view doesn’t feel as foreign as he expected, although he would have given anything still to have seen white cliffs. 

His chest is still heaving, rising and falling as though he’s finished a footrace. The garden and the pet ring he’d weathered stoically, because both had looked so different in decor and atmosphere compared to the first time he’d been here, a court remade. He’d been given a throne instead of the floor at Laurent’s feet. Laurent had tucked a white flower behind his ear, playful and careless of propriety.

The whipping post had been the same.

Well. The bloodstains had been wiped clean, he supposed.

He finds the farthest mountain peak and focuses on it, the cool wind biting his cheeks. Eventually his breathing returns to his control, and Damen turns around. 

He realizes then why he had not been disturbed: Laurent is standing by the doorway, but not blocking it. His hands are clasped together in a parody of calm. In his eyes is the knowledge that there are some things too difficult to be spoken of, or seen.

“Damen.”

“Don’t apologize,” Damen says roughly. The weight on his chest won’t leave no matter how much he inhales. “I won’t hear it.”

“I wasn’t going to.” Laurent’s gaze is cool but not unkind. He leans forward, like he’s about to take a step, but stops himself. “I—May I.”

Damen stretches out a hand. _Please._ It would be beneath his station to say.

Laurent comes anyway, pressing closer until they’re touching from shoulder to palm to hip. Their hands rest on the balustrade.

“I don’t know what happened,” Damen whispers. “I just—”

“Damen,” Laurent says. “It’s okay.”

“It isn’t!” Damen is not new to fear. He knows the tales of soldiers who come back from war rattled, not the same, and he knows he cannot afford that weakness. “I cannot be—I have to—to be able to—” There’s a snap in Damen’s voice that he doesn’t mean to be there, and he curses, unable to master himself. Laurent watches him.

“When I was sixteen,” Laurent says, something distant and flinty in his tone, “my uncle decided that I no longer held his interest.”

“Laurent,” Damen says, pained. “You needn’t—”

Laurent won’t look at him. The grip of his hand has tightened. “I want to.” 

Damen closes his mouth.

“By then, I was stupid, but no longer naive. I understood what losing his favor meant. For the entire week after, I couldn’t sleep.” Laurent is staring out at the city; the only visible signs of distress are the tense lines around his eyes, and the nails digging into Damen’s hand. “Until then I had still been sleeping in my old quarters, but afterwards I could no longer bear to be in my own rooms. I couldn’t bear the sight of my own bed, or the sheets, or even the desk. The clothes he had given me had to go; the jewelry, the perfume… even the fucking rug.” 

Laurent exhales through his mouth, a ragged, graceless gesture. “I gave most of it away. I could never have stood to keep it.” Damen’s thinking of their stop in Chastillion, how Laurent had sat sleepless at his desk until dawn broke. “That was the month I moved into the Crown Prince’s apartments.”

“Oh,” Damen says, the word punched out of him.

Laurent looks at him at last, a stare with no judgment. “All I mean to say,” he says, “is that I understand. I _understand,_ I— You don’t have to explain this to me, or to anyone. I can help you. But only if—if you wish.”

Damen breaks his gaze, swallowing, mostly because his eyes are filling with water. 

He covers his face with his other hand and Laurent pretends not to notice the shuddering of his shoulders, or maybe he just doesn’t mind. He presses a kiss to Damen’s cheek and leans his head into his shoulder, weathering the crushing grip of his hand, and waits. 

Damen loses track of time again. He raises his head, and sighs. “How long did I,” he starts. “How long has it…”

“Not long,” Laurent says quietly. “Less than half an hour.”

“We should get back,” Damen says, a pit of dread already settling in his gut. There is to be a banquet in the evening, and the courtiers’ favor yet to be won, and the Council meeting to prepare for—

“We are Kings.” Laurent rests his other elbow on the balustrade, leaning his weight on it and smiling blithely, a pose Damen has now come to know as deliberately insouciant. “There’s no rush.”

“I know you have things to see to—”

“Nothing else but you, right now.”

Damen looks away, hanging his head. “Thank you.”

Laurent angles his head close until Damen looks at him again. “Don’t. Don’t thank me.”

“You’re sweet to me,” Damen says. “Kind, and—” _Loving, and affectionate,_ in the only ways he knew how, despite everything. 

“I want you to be comfortable,” Laurent says, a quiet energy within him. “I want Arles to be home to you the way you made Ios a shelter to me.” Damen doesn’t know what to say to that, and Laurent flushes. “I know that may seem—improbable, given our—”

“No,” Damen says. He thinks of Laurent, drafting plans to make the place of his brother’s death the new capital. “No, that’s— I’d like that, Laurent.”

Laurent smiles, simple.

“Tell me something,” Damen says abruptly. “Something about Arles, that you like.”

Laurent looks surprised, and he’s quiet for a while, thinking. “The library,” he says tentatively, “belonged partly to my mother. The Akielon and Veretian collection was the royal family’s, but Maman brought books from Kempt and Vask. When I was young I would sneak into the library in the dead of night to read. Most of the time I’d fall asleep there and Auguste would find me and carry me back to my rooms, and I’d wake up annoyed that I’d been disturbed, so the next night I’d do it all again, until Auguste and Maman learned to let me sleep with a book underneath my pillow.”

By the end of it Damen’s laughing under his breath, and Laurent has the smile that means he is satisfied to have caused it. 

“Thank you,” Damen says, and Laurent accepts it for what it is. 

It’s quiet. There are no wild waves here beneath them to crash against the cliffs, like in Ios, but if Damen strains his ears he thinks he can hear birds singing in the garden, the whistle of wind. 

Inside the palace it will be another story, servants already bustling to ready the halls for tonight, courtiers gossiping in private rooms. 

_Just another moment,_ Damen thinks. _I’ll face them all in a moment._

Laurent stays with him. 


End file.
